Monte Cook's Beyond the veil - WTF? (spoiler)

[Mal Malenkirk]

You're right, I should post this over Monte Cook's board.

I would add that the error aren't all minor. Gaulmeth was made much tougher by having 29 AC instead of 26. I only caught the error after the fact.

As for the treasure, the other creature don't give much treasure either. They are all Half-dragon which account for much of their challenge. They are all treasure poor. The Huge Flail fell in the etheral river when the Dragon/stone giant toppled over during an epic fight on the ghost bridge.

Oh, and I scrapped the suggested treasure. Instead we opened the DMG and started rolling! Everyone (should) know that half the fun of finding a big treasure is to randomly roll the items. That way you get to see the face of the player who randomly roll a potion of ghould touch while another roll a rod of lightning and thunder!

 

[Pielorinho]

I have bought and run Monte Cook's adventure Beyond the Veil.

Should you win, you'll be rewarded with a great sword of wounding +1 and some gold. Oh, and a candle of truth and a ring of chameleon power. Yipee!

Here I go dredging up old topics -- but I'm getting ready to start running this adventure for my players tonight.

Naturally, this post contains beaucoup spoilers. Stay away if you don't want 'em!

First, thanks for the heads-up on errors in the adventure. I'll work on correcting some of these as we go through the adventure. Others, such as the faulty number of feats or the mistaken AC of the stone giant, are trivial: the PCs will never know, and the players will never know, and for all they know, this stone giant (for example) is a variant of the normal race with exceptionally tough skin.

I will say that I added up the dragon's hoard, and it comes out to a pretty respectable 58,000 + gold pieces worth of treasure. This is double an EL 16 encounter, and it's supposed to be only CR 12.

Of course, I wonder about this: an adult black dragon is CR 13, and with the ghost template that pops up to CR 15, which is a wee bit tough for a 9th-level party. Why does the adventure posit Storamere as CR 12? Am I missing something? He looks utterly deadly to me.

Anyone else run this adventure? Did y'all have good experiences with it?

Daniel

 

[JacktheRabbit]

One would expect that particular author to be more skilled in that area.

Woot! MY module has less typos than Monte's! So far, anyways.

It sounds to me like the editor is at fault, really. That stuff should have gotten caught.

 

[ced1106]

Should you win, you'll be rewarded with a great sword of wounding +1 and some gold. Oh, and a candle of truth and a ring of chameleon power. Yipee!

**SPOILERS**

This happens in The Banewarrens as well. Treasure is "uncommon" so the NPCs give the PCs stuff. Or rather, treasure PCs can use is uncommon -- evil-aligned magic items abound.

Not going to go into the details of the major NPC error. (More like an oversight, imo.)


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Spatula]

Re: Re: Re: Monte Cook's Beyond the veil - WTF? (spoiler)

Sounds like a Tolkien type campaign.

Maybe you're forgetting that bit in the hobbit where the characters defeat 3 trolls without even really doing anything, and get 2 ancient elven blades and chestfulls of gold for it.

Or Bilbo finding a major artifact while groping around in a goblin cave. Or the dwarves getting a dragon's hoard without even having to fight the dragon.

Tolkien was a Monte Hall DM!

 

[laiyna]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Monte Cook's Beyond the veil - WTF? (spoiler)

Maybe you're forgetting that bit in the hobbit where the characters defeat 3 trolls without even really doing anything, and get 2 ancient elven blades and chestfulls of gold for it.

In fact it where 3 ancient elven blades, one has Gandalf, one did go to the dwarf leader (forgot his name) and the small sword that turns out also to be magical is sting.

Lai

 

[Pielorinho]

I've posted over on Monte Cook's thread about the adventure, mentioning some of the questions folk have, if anyone's interested.

Danie

 

[Darkness]

One would expect that particular author to be more skilled in that area.

Have you read RttToEE?

 

[gfunk]

Our DM has run us through a couple of Monte Cook adventures and he rants about how many errors there are.


********SPOILERS***********

































In the Demon God's Fane there is a room with a couple of Devourers and a Beholder. Essentially the whole room is filled with Walls of Force, kind of like a maze. Monte points out that the Beholder can suppress this with its anti-magic cone. Unfortunately, it does not penetrate Walls of Force (a fact my PC uses often to avoid being smacked down).

In "The Harrowing" from Dragon, there are some errors as well. For instance, one of the NPC drow in the Abyss has a Blink spell memorized. Unfortunately the Outer Planes have no connections with the Etheral, so this spell can't work.

 

[Pielorinho]

Okay, now I'm worried.

Last night's gaming session ended with a big battle from this adventure.

The PCs, levels 9-10, fought a ghostly adult black dragon, CR 12.

CR 12?

CR 12. That's CR 13 for being an adult black dragon, plus 2 for being a ghost. 13+2=12, apparently.

I figured I was missing something, that dragons must actually be weakened somehow by being ghostified. Nope! Especially not since this dragon has the unique ability to drain 1 STR and 1 CON with each hit.

By the end of the battle, which lasted I think 4 rounds, one PC was unconscious, one was close to unconscious, and one had survived only by hiding. The dragon had taken maybe 15 points of damage.

Complaints aside, here's my question. The adventure's culmination involves fighting this ghost-dragon on the ethereal plane. On the bright side, this means that it'll be corporeal and weapons will therefore hit it. On the down side, in addition to doing the 1Str, 1Con damage with each hit, it'll also do normal dragon damage with each hit. Plus it'll have a dragon's absurd AC. Plus it'll be fighting from a pool of acid, into which it can pull opponents.

My question is this: how the bejesus do I tone down a ghostly adult black dragon such that 3 (maybe 4) PCs of levels 9-10 have a prayer of taking it out? Right now, it looks like a high-end CR 15 creature (CR 16 or 17, if you think dragons are undervalued by their CR), and with the pool of acid from which to fight, it's close to EL 16 or 17, I'd say. I wanna tone that bastard down.

Thanks for any help!
Daniel